|
BBC News with Danielle Jalowiecka.
President Trump has announced that a ceasefire in Lebanon where Israel is fighting the Iranian-backed group Hezbollah will be extended for a further three weeks. The current pause had been due to expire on Sunday. Tom Bateman in Washington has the latest. The three-week truce extension was announced by Donald Trump in the Oval Office, flanked by his vice president and his secretary of state alongside the ambassadors from Israel and Lebanon. Each of them lavished praise on the president with words about making history. While significant, the ceasefire still amounts to an attempt to stem the renewed fighting that broke out when Mr. Trump himself along with his Israeli allies launched their war on Iran, any settlement of which is still elusive. As for the desire to strike a longer-term peace between Israel and Lebanon, it is highly ambitious and involves a demand for the disarmament of Hezbollah. The Indian government has reacted to a comment reposted by President Trump describing the country as a "hellhole," saying that the remarks were uninformed, inappropriate and in poor taste. The U.S. president had shared the transcript of a political talk show hosted by Michael Savage who complained that a baby born in the U.S. became an instant citizen and brought in their entire family from China or India. Shareholders of Warner Brothers Discovery have approved its sale to media conglomerates Paramount Skydance with the merger valued at a hundred and ten billion U.S. dollars. Michelle Fleury has the details. Shareholders at Warner Brothers have overwhelmingly backed a sale of the company to Skydance-owned Paramount, a deal that would bring together HBO Max, CNN and the Harry Potter franchise with CBS and the Paramount Plus streaming service. The merger still needs to be cleared by regulators in both the United States and the U.K. At the same time, reports say Skydance chief David Ellison is hosting a private dinner in Washington honoring Donald Trump just days before the White House Correspondents' Dinner. The event is expected to include journalists and political figures. Representatives at a U.N. Security Council meeting have said measurable yet fragile progress has been made in Haiti's fight against gang violence. A new multinational gang suppression force will be deployed in the coming months. Here's Mimi Swaby. Although representatives stress that fragile progress had been made, the new force is heavily anticipated to help Haitian authorities regain control and create conditions for longer-term stability and elections this year. Haiti's acting Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé addressed the meeting saying it was time to come together for the state to retake its rightful place and that Haiti would not perish. Since gang warfare erupted in 2021, nearly 1.5 million people have been displaced by the violence, half of them children. You're listening to the world news from the BBC. At least 17 civilians have been killed by Islamist militants in northeast Nigeria. A local official told the French news agency the victims were attacked while gathering firewood in Borno state. It comes as the Nigerian military reported several successful security operations in recent days. A preliminary report has blamed communication failure and a lack of equipment for last month's collision between an Air Canada plane and a fire truck at New York's LaGuardia Airport. Two Canadian pilots were killed. The report by the U.S. Transportation Safety Board says controllers mistakenly cleared the truck to cross a runway even as the jet approached then gave an order to stop without saying who they were talking to, leaving the fire crew confused. More than 250 immigrants from India claiming descent from one of the biblical lost tribes of Israel touched down in Tel Aviv on Thursday. They're the first to arrive since the Israeli government decided in November to accept around 4,600 members of the Bnei Menashe community. They say they're descendants of one of the ten lost tribes of ancient Israel who were driven out by the Assyrian kings roughly 2,700 years ago. The celebrated American conductor, pianist and composer Michael Tilson Thomas has died in San Francisco aged 81. Michael Tilson Thomas was the music director of the San Francisco Symphony for 25 years. His friend, the composer John Adams, paid him this tribute. "He never lost the wonder of childhood and I think that that's really true. You know he was probably one of the great Mahler conductors but the great thing about Michael is that he could do glam. He was from LA and but then, you know, he just was so imaginative and so perceptive." BBC News. |